Chapter 17
Back at the house, Miranda announced that she had a migraine and was going to bed. I thought it was more likely to be a whisky-induced headache but didn’t question her.
Holly and I went into the living room and she flopped on to the sofa, wrapping herself into a blanket. Her phone beeped, and she glanced at it. ‘Dad and Zack are on their way back.’
I sat by her feet on the sofa. I was impressed by how well she seemed to be coping, especially compared to Miranda’s meltdown.
I didn’t trust Lewis’s reaction, though I hadn’t quite figured out what he was up to.
Was Holly hiding how she really felt? Jasmine had described her as the ‘nice sister’, and I wondered if she felt this was a role she had to play.
If, underneath, she was as horrified as Miranda about everything Jasmine had told us.
At the same time, I had a fist of dread in my stomach and wanted to tell her about my suspicions.
But I was afraid of being wrong. It’s not easy to tell someone you suspect their brother of …
well, of what, exactly? Did I think Lewis was planning to murder Jasmine?
‘How are you doing?’ I asked, trying to buy myself time to think.
‘I can’t answer that at the moment except to say I’m exhausted. I wish Dad was here.’ There was a long pause. ‘I can’t believe he’s done all this without telling us. We’re usually really open with each other, as you’ve witnessed.’
I wasn’t convinced the banter and insult-trading counted as openness, but I let it go.
‘We don’t keep secrets. Not from each other.’
‘Are you sure?’
She narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Why do you ask that?’
Now was the time to tell her. But as I figured out exactly what I was going to say she closed her eyes and said, ‘Will you make me a cup of tea?’
In the kitchen, I put the kettle on, then paced the kitchen while I waited for it to boil.
‘Thank you,’ she said when I took the tea to her. I had made my mind up. I was going to tell her my suspicions, even if I wasn’t 100 per cent sure. But before I could speak, she gestured for me to come closer and put her arms around me, holding me tight. ‘I’m so glad you’re normal. Uncomplicated.’
‘Is that another way of saying “boring”?’
‘No. God, no. You’re sane. Not fucked in the head. That’s exactly what I need.’
‘You’ve had enough of bad boys?’
Now, she laughed. ‘I’ve had enough of drama.
You know I’ve had therapy about this? I was drawn to domineering, selfish men because that’s, well, it’s my dad.
Now I want something healthy. And no, I really don’t think you’re boring.
You’re still driven. You have ambition. But you’re motivated by something pure, aren’t you?
By wanting to know the truth. I like that, even if I think you’re wasted doing true crime. ’
She had just said she admired my pursuit of the truth. This was my opportunity.
‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ I asked. ‘That Lewis was so insistent that he and Jasmine go to see this cave painting or whatever it is?’
‘Oh, that’s just Lewis. Once he gets an idea in his head he won’t let it go.’
‘But even after all the revelations? And with the snow?’
‘That’s not the only thing that would put me off going in those caves, but like I said, Lewis gets tunnel vision.’
‘What’s the other reason you wouldn’t go in the caves?’ I expected her to say they were more dangerous than Lewis had made out. An easy place to have an accident.
‘It’s something that happened years ago, when we were kids. It’s the reason Brenda is feeling so shit today.’
I waited.
‘Brenda’s son, Jimmy, died in the caves. Morag’s brother. Lewis and I were there when it happened. Or I should say, we’d been there. We’d spent the evening with him.’
‘What?’ She had never told me any of this before.
‘It was New Year’s Eve, 2006. Or, I guess, the early hours of January the first. An accident. There’s a ledge inside the main cavern, a drop into a pool, and he must have got too close to it. He fell, hit his head. They said he drowned.’
‘Oh Jesus. But … you didn’t see it happen?’
She stared into her mug, which she held cupped in both hands, her legs under the blanket.
‘It was after the rest of us had gone home to bed. They found him the next day, after he didn’t come home and Brenda went looking for him.
Morag was still in bed, I think, with a terrible hangover.
We were all suffering. I remember waking up that morning and being sick, then going back to bed.
Miranda yelled at me for getting vomit on the bathroom floor, shouting that we couldn’t risk Mum catching anything.
Then they woke me up around lunchtime to tell me the news.
It was awful. They had Lewis and me at the police station for hours, and Morag, too, answering questions about what happened.
It was all really awkward. They immediately asked us about drugs and we both clammed up, thinking we’d get charged and that we’d never get into uni or get jobs or maybe even go to prison. ’
‘Very unlikely.’
‘Oh yeah, of course I know that now, but I was seventeen and I was terrified. But then Dad got a lawyer friend to fly up and he sorted it all out. Reassured us we could be honest without fear our futures were going to be ruined.’
I was sitting by her feet now, my hand on the blanket that covered her knees.
‘And … had you been taking drugs?’
‘We had. But not as much as Jimmy. He was off his face. We’d all drunk a lot, smoked some joints … Did some other stuff, too. But the point was, Lewis, Morag and I were fine to walk out of there and go home. Jimmy decided to stay behind for a while, try to sober up a bit before going home.’
‘Poor Brenda,’ I said. ‘And poor Morag.’
‘It was horrible for all of us. Messy. Brenda wanted to talk to us, but Dad sent us all back to Birmingham, saying he didn’t want anything to cause Mum any stress. She only had a few months left at that point. It was an awful time. ‘
I felt like I was interviewing her, but I couldn’t help it. ‘Did Brenda blame you?’
‘Put it this way, she hasn’t been friendly to us since.
I think the rest of the village blamed us, even though it wasn’t our idea to go to the caves.
It was Jimmy and Morag. They were the locals.
The ones who’d been going to the caves since they were kids.
But it’s a small community and we were outsiders.
And Lewis was the last person to see him alive. ’
‘What?’
‘Well, him and Morag.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I’m really not feeling great. I think this thing with Jasmine has hit me harder than I realized. I think I might go to bed as well. I just need to be on my own for a bit. I need some space.’
She got up and left the room, leaving me sitting there, reeling. Lewis was the last person to see Jimmy alive – in the caves where he was now taking Jasmine?
At the very least, he definitely knew it was a place where someone could have an accident.
A fatal accident.
I promise you, Miranda. It’s not going to turn out like that. I’m going to fix it. Trust me.
And then I remembered something else. The search on the iMac.
How long does it take to drown?
Lewis was taking Jasmine to these caves, a place where a young man had fallen to his death years ago. There was a dangerous ledge in the same cavern as the rock carving. A pool where a young man had drowned.
Lewis had insisted on taking the woman who could make him considerably poorer there, despite the coming snow and encroaching darkness.
She slipped and fell, I heard him say. Drowned. Just like Jimmy.
This was no paranoia. Lewis had been faking his surprise ever since Jasmine had got here.
Somehow he had known all about their marriage and plans to have a family – otherwise why would he have acted so coolly while Miranda and Holly were rightfully outraged?
Or perhaps it didn’t matter to him because he was already planning to get rid of her, wasn’t he?
Now it made sense why he had wanted me to overhear his conversation with Jasmine in the kitchen this morning.
I was the witness who would tell the police that he hadn’t coerced Jasmine into going.
In fact, I would no doubt have said, he had seemed genuinely excited about showing her the rock carving.
There hadn’t been any hint of darker plans.
Trust me. I’m going to fix it.
I was the only person who suspected the truth. But unlike most true-crime documentary-makers, who trace backwards to get to the truth about what was behind some awful crime that had already happened, I had a chance to stop it.
I thought about going upstairs to talk to Holly, but it might take me ten or fifteen minutes to try to persuade her of my theory, and I was very aware that the clock was ticking. Lewis and Jasmine had headed to the caves almost an hour ago.
Oh God.
If I was right, she might already be dead.